Free The Mysterious Miss Mayhew by Hazel Osmond Page A

suddenly pulled up sharp on his leash.
    ‘Not a problem,’ Tom assured him. ‘After all, that’s what you’re here for – to learn how we operate—’
    ‘And how to manage .’ Mrs Mawson said the word as if it was interchangeable with how to rule . Tom suspected that, for Jamie, it was more about learning what was expected of the ‘spare’ when the ‘heir’ was running the big, pointy-ended, serious stuff.
    ‘Well, Tom, it’s been good to see you again.’ Mrs Mawson was getting up and he did too. ‘Oh, and thank you, I appreciated the photographer taking some shots of Mabel and her horse at the show.’
    Tom had to resist the urge to bend his knee when she was gracious like this, because however you looked at it, their relationship had distinctly feudal overtones. He wasn’t sure where he ranked in the pecking order of themany people who worked for her. Probably slightly above the manager of her farm shop, but way below her gamekeeper.
    ‘When would you like Jamie to start?’ he asked and she said, ‘Why, now, of course.’
    He got to the door before her and had his usual tussle with it.
    ‘I don’t suppose …’ he began and he sensed that she knew he was going to raise the issue of the state of the building because she said sharply, ‘Any luck with a replacement for Charles?’
    Tom was never quite in tune with Charlie being referred to as Charles. But then, he still couldn’t believe the old goat had been Mrs Mawson’s father. She definitely took after her mother. Another woman who liked to show you her nostrils.
    ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Charlie is a hard person to replace.’
    ‘Yes.’ Emotionless. The relationship between Charlie and his daughter had been glacial on her part, tepid on his.
    He heard her sigh as if she was using it as a thick-nibbed marker to underline her point. ‘It is rather tiresome to see his work rehashed issue after issue.’
    Great, landed with babysitting her son and rapped over the knuckles. He was irritated enough not to walk her down the stairs to the street.
    ‘Sorry, you know, about me being dumped on you,’ Jamie said when she was gone. Tom had never heard a Mawson apologise for anything – not even Charlie over the flashing incident.
    Jamie was looking at his shoes, his hand skimming up over his forehead and then pushing back his floppy hair in that movement that got handed out at birth with the investment bonds. When he looked up, a message passed from those brown eyes to Tom’s green ones along the lines of: I have no interest in this, but I’ll try my best to pretend I do . And the message Tom attempted to convey back was: Just make sure you pretend really well, otherwise when it gets busy, you’re going to find yourself out on a windowsill with half my staff urging you to jump .
    Feeling they’d reached some kind of agreement, Tom said, ‘Come on, I need some help with the travel pages – the guy who usually does them is on long-term sick leave and as you’ve just been travelling …’
    Jamie looked slightly more animated and Tom shepherded him towards the door and braced himself for what was sure to be a fine display of sucking up from Victoria.

CHAPTER 12
    Having failed to get a reply from Natalie all morning about the babysitting, Tom went out at lunchtime to buy a sandwich and spotted her by the bookshop. She was doing a one-legged dance as she tried to put the brake on a pram with her foot. Her arms were full of bawling baby.
    ‘Want a hand?’
    ‘Thanks!’ She shoved the baby at him and he walked around on the pavement jiggling it in his arms, one hand lightly on the back of a downy head, the way that he’d used to do with Hattie. Natalie bent down to apply the brake and he looked away. God, he must be getting old if he was beginning to feel uncomfortable about how short skirts were.
    The baby seemed to be calming down.
    ‘Not lost your knack, then?’ Natalie said when she straightened back up. ‘And sorry, Tom, I know